overwordExplorer
NORWEGIAN BOKMÅL · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

by.

town, city (regardless of population size or land area)

2 characters1 syllables approx.Norsk bokmål language

Meaning & usage

noun/byː/
  1. town, city (regardless of population size or land area)

    masculine
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Danish by, from Old Norse býr (“place (to camp or settle), settlement”), derived from búa, whence bo.

verb/byː/
  1. to command, order

  2. to bid, offer

  3. to invite

Where this word comes from

Inherited from Danish byde, from Old Norse bjóða, from Proto-Germanic *beudaną (“to offer”). The contracted pronunciation is probably due to native Norwegian influence as it seems not to have been common in Danish (unlike other verbs such as bede, whence Bokmål be).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.